Breakfast Lasagna Will Get You Through These Next Few Days

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Lasagna is a powerful, thoughtful act of love, care, and precision. Lasagna is an art form. Lasagna cannot be just thrown together last minute to get dinner on the table. Good lasagna is better than the greatest casserole, and great lasagna is a desert island dish, a death row request for a last supper. A good lasagna can be achieved with store-bought noodles, a good meat sauce, creamy ricotta and mozzarella. A great lasagna is about a zillion layers of super-thin homemade noodles, rich béchamel sauce, homemade ragu made with three to four meats, fontina and Parmigiano reggiano.  On the rare occasion I make it, I cannot help but overindulge, including warming slices of the leftovers for breakfast. Which got me thinking: Instead of just having leftover dinner lasagna for breakfast, what if I made breakfast lasagna?  For starters, I swapped out the noodles for homemade crepes. Italians have done this for ages, making crespelle and swapping them for noodles in all sorts of dishes. Crepes are much easier than homemade noodles, and I am a big believer that breakfast should be easier than dinner. Not wanting to start the day with a long-cooked ragu, I looked to my husband's Southern roots for inspiration, landing on a classic sausage gravy. Breakfast sausage suspended in a rich creamy sauce essentially covered the béchamel and meat in one fell swoop. I went with roasted tomato slices which are easy to make and bring all the tomato flavor without adding an extra sauce element, some ricotta to lighten it up a bit, soft scrambled eggs, and a blanket of mozzarella and Parmesan to hold everything together.  Is it a quick before-school breakfast? No more than lasagna is a quick weeknight dinner. But it is the perfect thing for a weekend breakfast when you can assemble most of it on Saturday and then finish Sunday morning as an act of devotion for the ones you love, which I sincerely hope includes your own fabulous self. No one deserves lasagna more than the cook. Breakfast LasagnaNote: I often roast fresh tomatoes in large batches and freeze them in the summer when tomatoes are ripe, but this calls for roasting canned tomatoes, which is easier and doesn't rely on seasonal produce.  If you have roasted tomatoes in your freezer, use them.Note: You can make the dish ahead without the eggs. Store covered in the fridge and just bake at 350°F covered for an hour or so before finishing the dish per recipe instructions.

By Stacey Ballis
Recipe by Extra Crispy

Gallery

Credit: Photo by Stacey Ballis

Recipe Summary

Yield:
Serves 8
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Ingredients

For the crepes:
For the sausage gravy:
For the roasted tomatoes:
For the ricotta filling:
Make the eggs:
Finish the lasagna:

Directions

  • Mix the eggs into the milk in a small bowl and stir in the melted butter.  Sift the flour and salt together, and put into a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients and mix until well combined, I sometimes use an immersion blender to get it super smooth. It should be slightly thicker than heavy cream, but very fluid and pourable. Let sit at room temperature for 30-120 minutes before making crepes.

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  • In a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat, cook the sausage, using a spatula to break the meat up into crumbles, and cooking until browned and cooked through. Remove the sausage to a bowl, leaving the fat in the skillet. Eyeball how much fat is left, you want about 3 tablespoons. If you don't have that much, add a bit of butter to get to that 3 tablespoon mark.

  • Preheat oven to 300°F.  Grease a large baking tray with olive oil.

  • Beat the egg with the olive oil until smooth. Mix with the ricotta until you get a soft blend, then add parsley, salt and pepper. Set aside.

  • Preheat the oven to 350°F. Layer 2-3 crepes to cover the bottom of a greased 9x13 casserole dish. Spread 1/2 of the ricotta mixture over the crepes. Layer 1/2 of the tomatoes over the cheese mixture, then pour 1/2 of the sausage gravy over the tomatoes.  Repeat this layering. Add a last layer of crepes on top of the last layer of gravy. Cover the casserole with foil and bake for 30 minutes. At the 20 minute mark, make the eggs.

  • Beat the eggs in a medium bow with the grated butter until combined. Melt the last tablespoon of butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Scramble the eggs to soft curds. You want these looser than you might think because they will continue to cook in the casserole. Set aside.

  • Remove the lasagna from the oven and discard foil. Turn on the broiler. Spread the eggs on top of the dish and then sprinkle the top with 2 cups shredded full-fat mozzarella and 1/2 cup grated Parmesan. Return the dish to the oven for 4-5 minutes until cheese is melted and slightly browned.

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